


Closer to the Edge

by Lolibat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fandom Bingo, Feels (sorta), Fluff, In which Sasuke is a kid, In which Sasuke is horrified, Luna Lovegood - Freeform, Luna Lovegood/Uchiha Itachi - Freeform, Team Seven is a ton of fun to write, The courting rituals of an older sibling in the eyes of the traumatized younger sibling, Trapped in a Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 08:14:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8197463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolibat/pseuds/Lolibat
Summary: Falling in love was a lot like walking into a brick wall repeatedly, face first, Uchiha Itachi thought. At the tender age of twelve, the eldest son of the Uchiha clan head already knew that he was likely to end up dead in a ditch somewhere before his time, unmarried and untouched by romantic love of any sort. And he was completely okay with it, until love found him instead. “Moon Frogs on your mind?” An amused, childlike voice asked next to him. Instinctively, he couldn’t help but flinch and rein in his gut reaction to stick a kunai in the civilian-who-had-no-presence-at-all. It was surely the oddest thing that has happened to him within the last month, and that was saying a lot given that his ANBU captain is Kakashi of all people.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cywscross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/gifts).



Closer to the Edge

Falling in love was a lot like walking into a brick wall repeatedly, face first, Uchiha Itachi thought. At the tender age of twelve, the eldest son of the Uchiha clan head already knew that he was likely to end up dead in a ditch somewhere before his time, unmarried and untouched by romantic love of any sort. And he was completely okay with it, strangely enough. Life is what it is- ephemeral as it might be- and he has never had any romantic notions or feelings towards anyone. Dying loveless was much preferable to being stuck in some sort of unhappy arranged marriage, and children born in the time of war and violence are better off dead or unborn altogether. So, at the ripe old age of twelve, Uchiha Itachi knew that he was perfectly content with not falling in love _ever_ and just focusing on his career as an ANBU in service of Konoha no Gakure.

That was, until _love_ found _him_ instead. He didn’t even have a say in it- _no, not at all_ \- it was literally as if he had walked into a brick wall or had one dropped on him- _ow_. He didn’t even know her at all- a civilian, from the look of her untoned arms and wide blue eyes. She was one of the Konohans who preferred to live closer to nature on the edges of the village- _closer to the Uchiha compound_. He didn’t know when she moved here nor where she was born- just that she has always been here even though she’s clearly not a local (those clear blue eyes bright with innocence and clarity, unclouded by the guilt of murder, aren’t something that _belongs_ here).

They met on a normal day- he had just finished yet another S-ranked mission and was doing groceries for his mother as usual, when his hand brushed her small, uncalloused ones.

“Moon Frogs on your mind?” An amused, childlike voice asked next to him. Instinctively, he couldn’t help but flinch and rein in his gut reaction to stick a kunai in the civilian-who-had-no-presence-at-all.

It was surely the oddest thing that has happened to him within the last month, and that was saying a lot given that his ANBU captain is _Kakashi_ of all people. As it was, he just blinked at the blond haired, blue eyed girl in confusion.

“Is this the tomato you wanted?” She asked, pulling out a ripe tomato straight off of the vine of tomatoes that she had in her arms.

Still, he blinked and his mind immediately drew up a list of half a dozen contact poisons that could be on the tomato skin. But how did she even know that tomatoes were at the very top of his grocery list?

With a mysterious smile and a cheerful wave, she disappeared into the crowd. Itachi watched as her long blonde hair swayed with the wind and wondered how someone so distinctive can just vanish like the wind. He blinked and held on to the tomato.

* * *

“You’re in love,” Shisui says one day over practice, casual and lighthearted. The abrupt statement catches Itachi off guard- something that has been happening with worrying frequency as of late. Shisui takes the opportunity for what it is and lives up to his moniker, and while Itachi was fast enough to raise a block to his kick, he had a large, purpling bruise to show for his mistake.

To his credit, Itachi neither confirmed nor denied the statement.

“You’ve got it pretty bad, Cousin,” Shisui says at the end of the day and applies more bruise cream to Itachi’s arm.

Itachi, as usual, stays silent. He thinks of the doe eyed girl he saw- innocent and fragile. It was precisely this _innocence_ that he wanted to preserve- to never see that smile extinguish or dim. That cheerful smile free of war is like a gentle wind on a hot summer day, a delicate flower unfurling its petals to greet the sun. Protecting something as precious as this- it is a worthy goal, is it not? He sees her every day, in the smallest of things. He sees her in the bright yellow petals of narcissus flowers while walking Sasuke to school. He sees her in the tranquility of a cup of green tea on a clear day. Her face flashes in his mind in the most inopportune moments- it slips past his guard when he absolutely must not be distracted- and he thinks of how he doesn’t even have her name.  (He walks into a wall the first time, and precocious little Sasuke tattled to their mother, and Mikoto nearly laughed herself sick.)

Yet, he is a shinobi, and she is not. He is an Uchiha (the clan heir at that), and she is not. Those two points alone are enough to cool Itachi’s head. For a person like him, who has never known love (and probably never will), he is content to observe its shining brilliance from the sideline, never too close yet never too far. To bask in its presence from far away, to ponder on a daydream that he will never know… that is enough to satisfy a person like him.

Shisui draws back with an unreadable look on his face. “She’s not an Uchiha,” Shisui half-asks with sad grey eyes.

Itachi’s silence is enough, and Shisui pats his shoulder in silent sympathy.

* * *

“You should bring half a pack more shuriken with you on your next mission,” a voice calls from behind him. While he didn’t sense a presence at all, this time, he knows not to attack- this voice is the same one he has heard in his dreams every night.

“You’ll need them. Tomatoes again?” the mysterious girl asked as she inspected his grocery basket carefully. “You should try Nakahara-san’s vegetable stand next time. Her tomatoes are very good.” She nodded with all the wisdom of a particularly old fishmonger.

Itachi stares at the strange civilian girl currently invading his grocery basket and fights the urge to etch her delicate features into his mind with the Sharingan. He ponders her words- once again, he had just finished a mission- an assassination one at that- and he won’t (or shouldn’t) have another mission for quite a while. He wonders if he should take a civilian’s advice when it comes to his professional gear.

A dainty hand pats him on his shoulder, and he snaps out of his reverie. A gentle smile meets his gaze, and he’s suddenly frozen still, not quite sure what to say. His heart skips a beat, and suddenly he is at lost for words. But surely, he must say _something_ before that girl disappears into the masses again. _Ask her name, you idiot_ , a part of him that sounded uncomfortably like Shisui berated.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything.” Itachi notes that her eyes crinkle around the corners when she smiles, and her eyes seem to almost sparkle in happiness.

“My name is Luna- I live across the street from here. We should meet up again, and maybe then the new batch of tomatoes I’m growing will be ripe by then.” She grins brightly at him and flits away like the fairy she is.

Itachi absently reaches up to his shoulder and brushes his fingers over the spot she touched. It tingled all the way home.

* * *

He’s only halfway surprised when he walks into the house to find a mission scroll waiting for him on the dinner table. With a practiced gesture, he opens the chakra seal on it and unfurls the scroll to read; just a border patrol- C ranked. It was Konoha policy not to send shinobi on back to back missions in peacetime, which means that this mission is probably from the clan to gain exposure.

Such a tedious mission, Itachi thought with a wary sigh. And here he was thinking that he’d help Sasuke with his shuriken technique tomorrow.

Speaking of shuriken, he thought and glanced at the kunai pouch at his waist. The girl’s words echoed in his mind. Would he _really_ pack extra gear just because a civilian girl told him to?

Luna, his mind scolded. She has a name now.

And so she does, Itachi acknowledged. He hasn’t lived this long without developing a healthy sense of paranoia, and so he packs a full extra pack of shuriken with him to border patrol. It earns him an odd look from his father, but he paid it no mind.

* * *

Border patrol turned out to be not so border and not so patrol. He wasn’t even at the border yet when he was ambushed by some unidentified ninja (unaffiliated usually means Iwa around these parts). Given that they weren’t expecting ANBU caliber ninja to take a lone border patrol mission, they were overpowered easily and charbroiled to perfection.

But if there’s an ambush this far out, then there’s a high likelihood that the outpost is already taken, his strategic mind analyzed. Proceed with caution.

I will, Itachi told himself. He sticks to the shadows and moves with the grace of a cat as he circled the outpost and looked for any signs of life. His casts a discrete genjutsu to hide his Sharingan and dispels others covering the area. As it turns out, there were genjutsu in the area- many of them. Genjutsus that were covering blood stains, that is.

Sending for reinforcements now would probably be too late, and he can’t retreat now without confronting the enemy at the least. The fact that they sent shinobi out to ambush him means that they know he’s there. Running away would only put him in a position for them to follow. If he strikes now while the metaphorical iron is still hot, he might yet have a chance.

And so, he strikes.

* * *

He runs out of kunai halfway through and modifies his technique to use shuriken instead, and then he runs out of those too.

In the haze of the battle, Itachi’s mind is clear; he reaches for the extra shuriken that he brought, just for this occasion.

After the battle, he realizes that he used exactly half a pack of his extra shuriken.

* * *

His actions at his not-so-straightforward border patrol earns him an extra week of leave from the Hokage, and his “heroic actions” were enough to shut the clan elders up (for now, he thinks).

He volunteers to do grocery shopping again for his mother, and she gives him a knowing look. Not for the first time, Itachi wonders if perhaps the true genius of the household was his mother. It is a waste of her talents to be stuck as a housewife when she clearly outshines her husband. He keeps his expression flat as he pokes Sasuke on the forehead (much to his protest) and heads out to the nearby market.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” a voice calls to him. He turns around to find Luna once again standing behind him.

“I’m afraid the tomatoes aren’t quite ripe yet,” she says, twirling a lock of wavy blonde hair around her fingers.

“How did you know that I would need extra shuriken?” Itachi speaks to her for the first time.

Her eyes shine even brighter still, and her expression lights up. “I just Know things sometimes, like I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, like I know where to find the best produce at the cheapest price.”

An odd comparison, perhaps, Itachi mulls. She sees the future, he guesses. He is not incorrect.

* * *

He sees her in his dreams sometimes. He _knows_ that he’s in a dream because Konoha could never look so at peace in real life.

He sits with her, on top of the Hokage mountain, on a green meadow that grows there, shaded by the trees. The day is bright, and the sun is high overhead; wisps of white clouds drift by whimsically, pristine and carefree. The wind ruffles through his hair, and he hears the rustling of leaves on their branches and fallen ones on the ground. Distantly, he hears the screeching of an eagle- perhaps one from a nest nearby.

From his vantage point, he oversees the entire village, from the tallest of buildings to the smallest of side streets. From this high up, the people of Konoha look as though they are mere ants, bustling about in one great anthill. Distantly, the sounds of daily life echo up to the skies- the sound of children laughing, merchant carts through the streets, busy live markets and the haggling of housewives. They become jumbled together, sound mixing with sound, and none of it bothers Itachi one bit.

It is peaceful, he thinks. It is a peace that perhaps he will never know.

Beside him, a soft, dainty hand crosses his and he turns to look at his side.  He sees the pale, unscarred limb and he gaze traces up to see cerulean blue- the same blue as the skies above them.

Of course his mind would dream her up, he scoffs. He wonders how pathetically sad he could possibly get, and his mind flashes to Shisui’s face atop the cliff edge, with blood pouring out of one eye. Itachi blinks and ruthlessly shuts his thoughts down.

The girl- Luna- looks at him as if she knew precisely what he was thinking of. It would be irritating, perhaps, the lack of privacy, but there are somethings better left unsaid. This would be one of them.

“Is this a dream?” Itachi asks instead. His voice is soft and emotionless, precisely as it was trained to be.

“It is if you want it to be,” Luna says calmly. She looks him in the eyes fearlessly, and she smiles gently at him.

Itachi thinks of how his ribs had ached with the sobs that wracked his body the night before. He thinks of the tear stained sheets that he fell asleep in that night, and he knows that surely, this peace cannot be a reality. It can be nothing but a dream, at best. A fool’s dream at that.

“Hn,” he responds and pulls his hand away from hers. It trembles in his lap; a murderer like him does not deserve her kindness.

Instead of being discouraged, the small slip of a girl scoots closer to him and lays her head on his shoulder. He flinches and stiffens at the personal contact; the smell of wildflowers and honey fills his senses, and against all odds, he relaxes. Waving blonde hair cascades down her shoulder and pools in her lap.

“A dream,” she leans in close and whispers, “is a wish that your heart makes. Is this- this peace- what you wish for?”

“Yes” he replies, and he has never meant those three letter so much in his life.

“Then it’s a dream,” she nods sagely. Itachi wonders about her logic and how it sounds so strangely wise. “It can be something else if you want it to be. A dream doesn’t have to stay a dream- that would be quite sad, wouldn’t it?”

Itachi ponders on his words slowly. “It is a dream, because it cannot be anything else. Not in this world. Not for someone like me.”

“It _can_ be if you _let_ it be; a wish can come true if you wish hard enough for it to- if you _want_ enough, the world bends to your wish,” Luna says cryptically. She giggles as a pair of white butterflies flits close to her air.

Strangely puzzled and content to simply bask in her warmth, Itachi is silent. He smiles at her indulgently and leans his head back against hers. His hand finds hers, and it says there- _where it belongs_ , he thinks.

He doesn’t know how long he stayed that way, and the sun never did set in the world that he dreamed up (a world that he wishes with all his might would become reality), but he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t want to wake up, _now or forever,_ and he’s content to stay. His eyesight drifts to the girl resting next to him, and he can’t resist the temptation to turn on his sharingan and commit this dream to memory. To do something selfish for himself, _just for once. For this love that he’ll never know again in his life_.

“I don’t mind,” she hums. Her eyes are still shut, and Itachi fails to be surprised anymore at Luna’s uncanny ability to predict the future.

He memorizes her face and brands it into the forefront of mind, and he uses his god-curst eyes to remember the face of this dream- this illusion of peace.

“I forgive you,” Luna says quietly. She curls a lock of his jet black hair with one of her own golden ones and looks up at his blood red eyes. “I forgive you for what you have done and what you will do. For this dream that you wish for, I forgive you for what you do.”

How he still has any tears left, he didn’t know. Perhaps he is more surprised than she is, when a single tear drops onto her hair. And another, and another after.

“I’ll do my best to take care of things here, for your dream- our dream. I love you,” she whispers against his skin, and for a moment, Itachi feels a gentle pair of lips against his face, and then he wakes up.

He wakes up in his futon, and the dawn is barely breaking- the night is still dark. He wakes up and looks at the calendar with the dreaded date on it circled in red with a dozen senbon poking through the back of the calendar. Absently, he brushes off the tears that still linger on his face.

With a deep breath, Itachi gets up.

* * *

Luna opens her eyes slowly to the brightness of the sun; she turns and curls in her bed, knowing deep within her what is to happen on this dreaded day. Not for the first time, she wished that she could have never been born with this gift at all, if she could not change the future.

But perhaps it is a unique brand of mercy, to show kindness to a martyr in his last moments. Futilely, Luna murmurs a quick prayer- for what, she wasn’t sure.

She gets up and starts her day, knowing full well what devastation the village will wake up to tomorrow. Absently, she checks over her growing vegetable garden and notes that the tomatoes were steadily turning red.

* * *

“Hey Sasuke, where do you _get_ these tomatoes? They’re _so good_ ,” Naruto moaned around his mouthful of tomato. He takes another bite out of his tomato and doesn’t notice when tomato juice drips down his chin. Normally, when it’s Sasuke’s turn to bring team lunch, he just brings a couple of tomatoes, and Naruto would mind more if that lazy bastard didn’t bring the _most delicious tomatoes ever_.

“Don’t speak with your mouth full, Idiot!” Sakura snapped, a half-eaten tomato in one hand.

Absently, Sasuke glared at the half tomato in Sakura’s hands- if that silly fangirl wanted to diet, she can diet _without_ wasting that tomato.

“Hn,” he half-answered Naruto.

“Teme! ‘Hn’ is not an answer!” Naruto yelled in Sasuke’s face. Sasuke blinked and waited for his ears to stop ringing and for his vision to stop flashing orange spots.

“Hn,” he repeated, just to get on Naruto’s nerves. Then, he added a proper answer before the boy could take a deep breath and yell in his face again. “I don’t know,” he admitted quickly.

That stopped _both_ Naruto and Sakura in their tracks. Sasuke mentally gave himself a pat on the back for a job well done.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Naruto asked incredulously, his volume dial permanently stuck on high.

“Yeah, what do you mean, Sasuke-kun?” Sakura added with fake-saccharine goodness and extra fake eyelashes.

Sasuke absently wondered what part of “I don’t know” they do not understand. Three words, three syllables. Easy. As such, he just stayed silent and wondered if their brains needed more time to boot up.

“I think what they mean, Sasuke-chan, is how you do not know where your food comes from?” And there is the second-to-last person Sasuke ever wants to see in his life, perched up in a tree like some sort of demented porn-reading owl.

Sasuke scowled at him thunderously, and Kakashi only smiled and flipped a page. “I said, I don’t know.”

“So what? They just appear in your house randomly by some tomato-granting fairy?” Naruto asked, sarcasm thick in his tone.

Sasuke fought the temptation to point out that by his logic the tomato in his hand right now is also from the same tomato-granting fairy. But then again, logic and Naruto goes about as well as one train and another in a head on collision, and so he refrained.

“Actually, yes,” he bit out at last. Past the sarcasm, Naruto had really described the situation quite accurately.  

At the thought of an unknown person breaking into _her_ beloved Sasuke’s house ( _A love rival!_ _Cha! Inner thought_ ), Sakura choked and dropped her tomato onto the ground in shock.

Sasuke glared.

* * *

Four years and a change in alliance later, Sasuke stared in wonder at the perfectly ripe tomatoes sitting in a fruit bowl next to his bed.

He has no idea _who_ keeps leaving tomatoes in his room for years (practically ever since he started living alone), _why_ they do, or _how_ they do it, but maybe the situation is getting _a little_ out of hand if a stranger is breaking into Orochimaru’s secret hideout just to leave him fresh produce.

Absently, he wondered if maybe Naruto and Sakura were right to question the source of his tomatoes back when they were genin.

Still, that doesn’t stop him from reaching a hand out for one.

* * *

He meets his tomato-giving fairy years later, on top of the ruins of Konoha.

There is a blonde _civilian_ of all people in the middle of the battlefield, talking to his resurrected brother, who _smiled and laughed_.

Sasuke rubbed his eyes and wondered if Naruto slipped something into his lunch. He wouldn’t put it past him (or Sakura, really) to pull something underhanded- they’re _ninja_ , after all. Like the good little brother he is, he crouches down behind a boulder and listens in.

“I took care of things while you were gone,” the girl said, her hand in Itachi’s. Sasuke nearly choked.

“You did,” Itachi conceded. His lips twitched- Uchiha Sasuke’s mysterious source of Perfectly Ripe Tomatoes ™ was a such thing of gossip in Oto that it had even reached the ears of his spies. He knew the moment he heard of it who was behind the odd occurrence (logistics be damned). “So that wasn’t a dream, after all.”

“It is, if you want it to be,” The girl twirled a strand of blonde hair around her finger. Bright blue eyes glanced at the boulder where Sasuke was crouching. She smiled, and Sasuke felt the back of his neck heat up in embarrassment. How on Earth did a _civilian girl_ of all people manage to spot him?

“So you said,” Itachi nodded and smiled. He leaned in close and rested his head on top of the girl’s. She was a good head shorter, Sasuke noted with part horror and part wonder.

“Do you not see it?” she berated gently. “This dream of ours- what was once yours, became mine, and now it is everyone’s. Don’t you see all the people here, wishing and fighting hard for the same thing we do?”

“Yes, so they are,” Itachi agreed after a moment’s pause.

“And when you wish hard enough- when you _want_ enough- any dream can come true,” he murmured.

The small blonde girl patted him on the head, though she had to stand on her tip toes to do so. Amused, Itachi bent his knees a little to help her reach. “See?  You learn well,” she beamed at him. It was a thousand- watt smile, bright and innocent and free of the kind of sharp deceit that lines the best shinobi’s smiles.

“See now? Your sacrifice won’t be in vain, you big silly dummy,” she whispers quietly. Sasuke strains and sees a glimmer of tears before she buries her face in his brother’s shoulder. He wraps one arm around her shoulder and another around her hips.

Embarrassed enough for having been spotted- let alone intruding on his dead brother’s time with his _girlfriend_ _or sort of girlfriend_ \- he made himself scarce and disappeared silently.

* * *

The next time he met her, he was in a daze. He returned from his lunch break with an odd look on his face (one which Naruto commented loudly on, and one which made Sai hover uncomfortably close). He shoved Naruto off his bench for his remark and broke Sai’s nose on reflex. Sakura, being the only _normal_ person on the team, took one look at Sasuke’s face and sighed. She healed Sai’s nose and didn’t even bother berating him for his lapse in attention.

“Just get your head back in the game, Uchiha. The fight’s not over yet- whatever dramatic world-ending crisis you’ve got bouncing around in that pretty head of yours can wait when the world’s not _actually_ ending.” She snorted and walked off, joining Shizune in carrying lunch boxes to the medical team.

Sasuke wondered, not for the first time, when Sakura had grown from a spineless fangirl to a (semi)fangirl who could break his spine with the pinky of her hand.

“Would you like a tomato?” A voice broke him from his musings. That voice sounds _really_ familiar, the traumatic part of his brain thought. _Nope_ , _not at all,_ the rest of him thought.

He glanced down to see the blonde girl who was just talking to his dead brother hold out a _very familiar_ fruit bowl full of _very familiar_ ripe tomatoes.

Sasuke wasn’t sure whether he wanted to cry or to laugh.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Mandy: In which no one taught Sasuke the concept of “Stranger Danger,” and he stands witness to the mating habits of his older sibling (as a younger sibling, I very much empathize with him). And Luna's version of "take care of things" is to make sure Sasuke eats his vegetables, and Shippuden Sakura is a total badass. Man, team 7 is such a riot to write, I think I might do a team 7 time travel fics one of these days, haha. 
> 
> Fandom bingo challenge for cywscross! This one should fit the one for “trapped in a dream” and “Luna Lovegood.” It’s sort of tragic when you really think about it- Itachi’s life was dictated by his desire of peace, but until he died it was just a dream that he was trapped in. One that only came to be after his death and his legacy part in it isn’t even widely known for the most part. 
> 
> Anyways, this started off as a sort of ItachixLuna fluff/angst/general Itachi awkwardness, but it sort of turned into something else midway through when I started writing Team Seven. In my defense, Team Seven is really easy and really fun to write (when you don’t think too hard about the logistics of ninja life anyways). Title is from the 30 Seconds to Mars song- 30STM is an amazing band with the best songs ever.


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